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Originally Posted by harperbrad
It makes me wonder what other things you might put into that slot. Since it is expecting just a dumb reader there, it is probably just looking for a file system. If this is the case, could you put a hard drive there? You can get a Toshiba 5 GB PCMCIA hard drive off of ebay from $30-$80. It would be nice to have 5GB of music sitting in your car, especially if it was built into the existing user interface. Does anyone have experience with the audio card reader?
Also, this got me thinking further that a pcmcia card that had a usb host could be extremely useful. Plug your phone/pmp/mp3 player into the usb slot in the pcmcia card, and voila! You've mounted the filesystem. The biggest hurdle I see is that the pcmcia card would have to have enough smarts to mount the usb device as a mass storage device without using any drivers. It would have to just look like a file system from the navi side of the connection. I've checked around, and this sort of device doesn't exist. However, I've designed both USB and PCMCIA interfaces before, and this would not be very hard of a product to bang out.
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Anyhow, the possibilities of integration with gadgets here is huge!
--Brad
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As far as the card reader I love it and use it everyday! I have a generic 6 in 1 PCMCIA adaptor with a 1 GB SD card. According to the manual its says to to use Hard drive based cards with the Navi/Card reader. It says that it may cause damage to the unit. However, personally I believe that it would be a problem, but I am not sure if that is a risk I want to take on a $1,500 unit. As far as usuing a USB host PCMCIA adaptor, I don't believe that would work because the screen for the Navi needs to open in order to insert the card. The screen will not close if the card is not inserted all the way, thus the USB host card will not be flush with the inside of the unit and the screen will not close. Most of the functions of the radio do not work when the screen is opened. The music continues to play but cannot use any controls on the unit and the steering wheel controls will only adjust the volume when the screen is open. It would be nice to be able to do that however. I still may try to use a hard drive based card in the slot one day. 5 GB of music sounds great....How about that XM radio!